A surface ion imprinted magnetic silica sorbent for the separation and determination of leaching silver in antibacterial food contact products

The objective of the present study was to develop a novel method for determining trace silver in leaching solution of antibacterial food contact products. For this purpose, a novel silver ion imprinted magnetic silica sorbent was synthesized by a surface imprinting technique. A new method, combining magnetic solid-phase extraction with flame atomic absorption spectroscopy, was developed, and the synthesized sorbent was used for detecting and extracting trace silver using the newly developed method. The main factors, such as pH, elution condition, ultrasonic time, and coexisting ions, affecting the magnetic solid-phase extraction procedure were investigated. The adsorption capacity of the new sorbent was 91.4 mg g(-1) for silver. Under the optimized conditions, our method showed a detection limit of 0.26 ng mL(-1) for silver with an enrichment factor of 91.8. The analytical results obtained from a certified reference water sample (GBW00809) were in good agreement with the certified value. Our method, when applied to determine trace silver present in the leaching solutions of different antibacterial food contact products, showed satisfactory results.